Amid sluggish growth, central bank lowers interest rate to 7%

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February 13, 2020

Love isn’t the only thing in the air on Valentine’s Day in Mexico. The holiday also brings in quite a bit of money to a number of sectors of the economy.

Valentine’s Day is expected to generate more revenue than Three Kings’ Day this year, according to the National Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco Servytur).

The association foresees the day of romance generating over 22.8 billion pesos (US $1.2 billion) in revenue, a 3.2% increase over last year.

“This is one of the [most] important celebrations for the Mexican economy. It even surpasses the earnings generated on Three Kings’ Day, which this year were 17.5 billion pesos,” said association president José Manuel López Campos.

He said that the only holidays with higher economic impact are Mother’s Day, which generated 47 billion pesos in revenue last year, and Father’s Day, which brought in over 25 billion.

The association estimates that the average lovebird will spend between 300 and 3,000 pesos on a gift, although there are certainly those sweethearts who will spend quite a bit more.

As the holiday falls on a Friday this year, celebrations could extend into the weekend, bringing in more revenue for restaurants, recreational businesses and, of course, hotels.

Concanaco Servytur expects the hotel sector to see a 3.9% increase over last year. Cinemas, theaters, amusement parks and other recreational businesses should enjoy a 3.7% increase, while restaurants, cafés and alcoholic beverages should see a 3.6% increase and electronics a 3.1% jump.

“The sales of flowers, candies and chocolates also increase 2.8%, clothing and shoes, 2.7%, [and] jewelry, 2.4%,” said López.

The website Tiendeo.mx, which aggregates sales and product offerings, has seen marked spikes in searches for a number of products deemed essential for celebrating Cupid’s special day.

These include a 190% increase in searches for jewelry, 120% for chocolates and a 54% leap in searches for condoms.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Oaxaca artisans make their mark on new Louis Vuitton collection

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Leigh Thelmadatter

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February 13, 2020

A collection of travel trunks recently unveiled by famed French designer Louis Vuitton bear the distinctly fanciful imagery of artisans from Oaxaca communities.

For the collection, displayed during the Zona Maco art-and-design 2020 event in Mexico City, Vuitton engaged painters from the small town of San Martín Tilcajete to intervene by illustrating likenesses of the state’s signature animal figurines upon them.

Entitled The Colorful Journey LV, it included six trunks with different designs and a similarly decorated image of a classic VW Beetle. The purpose was to introduce a new line of products combining the French house’s well-known product with Mexican creativity, combining “the heritage and craftsmanship of two cultures,” according to a press release.

Louis Vuitton hired Natalia Herrera, director of Atelier Cultural in Mexico, to curate the project. Herrera states that she chose the studio due to its work and the social and economic impact the project can have on its young painters.

Waldo Hernández, the director of Taller Casa Don Juan, stated, “We are happy to participate in this venture. Not only has it been a great challenge to work with the materials, but … it is also an important opportunity to show the world our work. Emigration has diminished in our community thanks to projects like these …”

Because of the extreme detail involved in depicting the figures, each case takes about a month to paint.

Although there have been problems in recent years associated with the use of elements from traditional Mexican handcrafts and folk art by different designers, Vuitton assures that the artists’ collaboration will fall under “fair trade” and will follow Mexican law.

In a press release the company said, “Clients will work directly with craftsmen from Taller Casa Don Juan’s workshop …” under the project name of “Los Maestros Artesanos de Oaxaca de Juárez” (Master Craftsmen from Oaxaca de Juárez). “This project has been created under the highest parameters of respect and good practices in the federal copyright laws and the law for safeguarding knowledge, identity and culture of indigenous communities.”

Meanwhile, another workshop in Tilcajete put out a statement disassociating themselves from the collaboration. According to a statement issued on February 8 by artisans Jacobo and María Ángeles, “some people have confused the decoration used in these pieces with our work, [due to] a regrettable ‘coincidence’ [their quotes] in the use of patterns, colors and figures of our workshop published on their social media.”

Although the workshop stated that they do not hold Louis Vuitton responsible for the similarity, and are not opposed to collaborations in their community, they nonetheless asserted, “It is the responsibility of legal experts to analyze if there is a violation of any law related to copyright or intellectual property …”

The statement was covered on February 9 by the magazine México Desconocido, which questioned the appropriateness of the project, referring to past problems with designer Carolina Herrera and with Vuitton himself last year.

Louis Vuitton was questioned by the Secretariat of Culture of Mexico in July 2019, when embroidery on chairs by the designer bore a resemblance to patterns from Tenango de Doria, Hidalgo. The secretariat wanted to know if the company had an arrangement with artisans there, and although Vuitton stated that that was the case, the chairs were taken off the market anyway.

México Desconocido also covered a response by Casa Don Juan, which begins, “We do not plagiarize. We inherit!”

“You argue that our works look similar. … In effect, everyone in the town makes these rabbits, coyotes, jaguars and serpents because they are our animals. Who did it first? This we would have to ask our parents and grandparents.”

Although the Mexican press is calling the figures “alebrijes,” which is the more commonly used name, Louis Vuitton has opted to call them “tonas” and “nahuals,” explaining that they “… are the combination of two powerful animals connected to the day and year in which a person is born.”

Source: El Universal (sp)

US $604 million earmarked for upgrade of Mexican railways

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February 13, 2020

Kansas City Southern is looking for a 26% increase in speed this year.

Three railroad companies will invest US $604.7 million this year in areas including infrastructure, technology and new trains.

Grupo México, the parent company of both Ferromex – the largest rail freight firm in Mexico – and Ferrosur, has announced investment of $466.7 million.

The money will be mainly spent on maintenance, improving operational efficiency, track construction and upgrading locomotive operating systems.

Ferromex/Ferrosur planning director Alberto Vergara said that the Altamira terminal at the terminus of the railroad between Altamira, Tamaulipas, and Monterrey, Nuevo León, will be upgraded to allow it to handle greater volumes of freight.

He also said that tracks that currently run through urban areas of Monterrey will be diverted to lesser-populated areas to increase security. Freight trains are regularly targeted by thieves.

For its part, Kansas City Southern de México has announced spending of $128 million in 2020. The investment will primarily be used to increase the speed at which the company’s trains can run and improve security, said executive operations director David Eaton.

“This year will be the year of security and speed,” he said. “Security is an obligation, not an option.”

The United States-based railway company is aiming to increase the speed of its trains by 26% in order to reduce transport times for freight such as fuel, chemicals and auto parts.

Ferrovalle, a firm that operates in central Mexico, expects to spend about $10 million this year.

“In the specific case of Ferrovalle, the investment will be 190.5 million pesos divided in three areas: infrastructure, technology and [new] trains,” said operations director Conrado Muciño.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Endemic rabbit threatened by weekend hordes of volcano gawkers

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February 13, 2020

The phantom mountain, as viewed from Mount Tláloc.

The massive influx of tourists to a México state national park each February to observe a phenomenon that involves a trio of volcanic peaks represents a threat to the habitat of the highly endangered volcano rabbit, says the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp).

More than 3,500 people climbed Mount Tláloc in the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl National Park last weekend to view the phenomenon known as montaña fantasma (phantom mountain) in which for a period of just 15 minutes at sunrise, the Malinche volcano in Tlaxcala, the Pico de Orizaba volcano in Veracruz and the Sierra Negra volcano in Puebla appear to merge on the horizon to form one continuous mountain range.

The phenomenon, which only occurs for five days each year in February, marked the start of the new year in central Mexico in pre-Hispanic times.

Visitor numbers to watch the montaña fantasma phenomenon from the peak of Mount Tláloc began to grow in 2012 and exploded in 2017 due to growing awareness generated by social media, the newspaper Milenio reported.

After last weekend’s influx, Conanp said that the large number of visitors damaged alpine grasslands inhabited by the volcano rabbit, a species endemic to Mexico known also as the teporingo or zacatuche.

The teporingo, the world’s second smallest rabbit after the pygmy, was declared extinct last year in the vicinity of the Nevado de Toluca, a volcano in México state.

Conanp also said that shrubs such as the long-living juniper, known as enebro azul, were trampled on and even used by visitors to make bonfires.

Amado Fernández, director of the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl National Park, said that Mount Tláloc doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure to receive the thousands of visitors that flocked there last weekend. In fact, it is only equipped to welcome a maximum of 200 visitors per day.

Fernández said that more needs to be done to distribute visitors across the five days during which the montaña fantasma can be observed.

While more than 2,000 witnessed the phenomenon on Saturday morning and approximately 1,500 did the same on Sunday, just 15 people were on the peak of the mountain on Wednesday, the final day in which the three volcanos appear to merge.

“Unfortunately, all the promotion … is for the weekend; that’s the problem we have,” Fernández said.

“So the invitation is to try to enjoy the phenomenon when there are less people at the site. … The most important thing is to conserve the ecosystems and all the biodiversity,” he said.

Source: Milenio (sp)

For lack of staff, woman gives birth on sidewalk outside clinic

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February 13, 2020

A woman gives birth outside a health clinic in Aquila.

In what the state Secretariat of Health is calling a “fortuitous birth,” a woman from Aquila, Michoacán, was forced to deliver her child on the sidewalk outside the local government clinic due to an alleged lack of personnel on Wednesday.

Aurelia Ramírez Reyes had planned to have her daughter in the hospital in the town of Coalcomán, nearly four hours away, but the girl decided to come early.

When Aurelia’s water broke outside the Aquila clinic, she lay down on the sidewalk, where people from town helped. With their assistance, she gave birth on a towel and covered by a blanket, without any help from trained medical personnel.

The Michoacán Secretariat of Health (SSM) reported that Aurelia and her daughter were in stable condition.

It said that mother and child were going to be transferred to a hospital in the nearby town of Coahuayana to be examined by specialists and that the department is “carrying out internal investigations in order to avoid that these cases keep happening.”

The SSM also said that it will determine if there was any violation of established procedures on the part of the clinic’s staff.

“We have also taken steps to ensure that the Aquila Health Center has permanent doctors and nurses on staff,” it added.

Wednesday’s birth was the second such case in Michoacán this month. On February 2, Elvia Ascencio was forced to give birth without medical supervision in the waiting room of the General Hospital in Los Reyes.

The SSM called it a “spontaneous birth,” despite the woman being in the hospital awaiting medical attention.

Governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo announced an investigation into the incident, but no results have been released.

Source: La Silla Rota (sp)

‘Don’t shoot, I’m innocent,’ decals proclaim after cops kill wrong man

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February 13, 2020

The bumper sticker asks police not to shoot.

The family of an innocent man shot to death by Tamaulipas state police have put the mishap that killed him in the public eye with bumper stickers that declare the young man’s innocence.

“Accredited state police. Don’t shoot. I’m Daniel. Don’t kill me, I’m innocent,” read the stickers they handed out to the residents of Río Bravo after Juan Daniel Ortiz was killed on February 7.

The officers reportedly confused Juan Daniel, 23, with a suspect for whom they had been searching. He had gone out to buy beer for a family gathering when police opened fire on his truck near his parents’ home.

His parents, María Guadalupe and Diego Ortiz, said that their son was an exemplary young man. He had recently graduated from the Technological University of North Tamaulipas with a degree in engineering.

They appeared in a video posted to Twitter on February 9 in which they recounted the young man’s final moments, during which his father had called him and heard him pleading with police not to shoot him.

Engineering graduate Ortiz and the bullet-riddled vehicle in he was killed. — Engineering graduate Ortiz and the bullet-riddled vehicle in which he was killed.

“I got there and said to them, ‘My son is innocent, my son is innocent.’ But they continued to shoot at him and I didn’t get any closer because they were going to shoot me too. My son didn’t have weapons, he didn’t have anything, he was alone,” his father said through tears.

He and his wife claimed that the police tried to plant a gun on Juan Daniel in order to justify having shot an unarmed man.

Juan Daniel’s friends and family hope that the bumper sticker campaign will help prevent other such tragic incidents with police in the area. In addition to the stickers, they also encouraged people to write personalized messages with shoe polish on their windows.

“Baby on board. Don’t shoot. We’re a family, not criminals,” read one such message.

Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca told reporters that the case is being investigated and said that those responsible for the innocent man’s death will not go unpunished.

“If there were errors, if there was excessive force, the law will be applied. The state Attorney General’s Office is carrying out investigations and there will be no restrictions on them … Any errors committed by authorities will have consequences,” he said.

Juan Daniel’s was the third case of an extrajudicial killing by Tamaulipas state police in less than a year. The Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee called out state police in September of last year for two incidents of alleged mistaken identity that led to the deaths of nine people.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Sin Embargo (sp)

Energy firm forays into electric auto manufacturing

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February 13, 2020

The hybrid-electric van, made in Mexico.

A Mexican electrical goods and energy company is now also an automaker: Grupo IUSA officially launched a range of four electric and hybrid vehicles on Wednesday at the Latin American Mobility Summit in Mexico City.

The vehicles are a compact car, an SUV, a hybrid-electric van and a passenger bus. Sales director Agustín Ortega said that all the vehicles are manufactured at IUSA’s plant in Jocotitlán, a México state municipality about 120 kilometers northwest of Mexico City.

“The plant has the capacity to manufacture up to 20 vehicles a week, depending on the model. They’re 100% Mexican designs and we want to expand the business, depending on demand,” he said.

Ortega said that IUSA began its automotive project a year ago with the aim of capturing a segment of the growing electric vehicle market. The models presented on Wednesday are tailored to the needs of the market, he said.

Called IIK, the compact car has a range of 440 kilometers before it needs recharging while the SUV, called ATL, has a 310-kilometer range. The hybrid van can travel up to 400 kilometers with a full tank of fuel and a fully-charged battery, while the 40-seat 100% electric bus has a 200-kilometer range.

IUSA vice president Juan Carlos Peralta told the news agency NotiPress that the company was motivated to move into the electrical vehicle sector to help reduce air pollution in Mexico and the related health problems it causes.

“[We are] presenting our family of vehicles to attend to the problem of … pollution [caused by] vehicles with internal combustion engines. This is our solution to the problem,” he said.

Established in 1939, IUSA produces a range of energy-related products including solar panels at a factory next to the México state automotive plant.

Source: El Financiero (sp), NotiPress (sp)

Ex-Pemex head was in on systematic looting of country: attorney general

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February 13, 2020

Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya – arrested on Wednesday in the south of Spain – was part of a scheme designed to “loot” Mexico, according to Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero.

Gertz told the newspaper Reforma that the state oil company’s purchase of a disused fertilizer plant in Veracruz for the allegedly vastly inflated price of US $475 million when Lozoya was CEO – a transaction from which the ex-official allegedly received millions of dollars himself – was one of a series of fraudulent cases in which the former official was involved.

“I don’t believe that this is an isolated case … It was conduct that was repeated in a very structured way with the aim of looting the country. I don’t see any other way to describe it,” he said.

Lozoya, CEO of Pemex between 2012 and 2016, allegedly received $10 million in bribes from Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht in exchange for the awarding of a lucrative contract for work on the state oil company’s refinery in Tula, Hidalgo.

The government alleges that $4 million of that amount came his way in March 2012 when the ex-official was working on the campaign of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, and some of the funds were allegedly funneled to the campaign, an accusation still under investigation by authorities.

Pemex’s purchases of other fertilizer plants when Lozoya was CEO, including one in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, owned by the company Fertinal, are also under investigation.

The head of the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit said Wednesday that Lozoya was part of a sophisticated money laundering ring that transferred tens of millions of dollars to several countries. His arrest means that “the party is over,” Santiago Nieto said.

Information supplied to Spanish authorities by the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) alleges that Lozoya benefited from fraudulent activity to the tune of $280 million.

Acting on an international warrant obtained by the Mexican government for Lozoya’s role in the purchase of the Veracruz fertilizer plant, Spanish police arrested the former Pemex CEO in the southern port city of Málaga as he left an upscale residential estate in a taxi.

When he was stopped by police, Lozoya reportedly showed them a fake driver’s license issued in Mexico City.

He appeared in a Spanish court on Thursday via video link and refused immediate extradition to Mexico. Judge Ismael Moreno ordered Lozoya to remain in provisional custody on the grounds that he is a flight risk and told him that the charges he faces warrant up to 15 years imprisonment in Spain.

Gertz Manero, left: 'looting the country; and Nieto: 'party's over.' — Gertz Manero, left: ‘looting the country; and Nieto: ‘party’s over.’

Mexico now has a period of 40 days within which it can formally seek the extradition of Lozoya to Mexico.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Wednesday that the department he heads will seek to move quickly in order to have the former official returned to Mexico, where warrants have been issued for his arrest on charges of bribery, criminal association and conducting operations with resources of illicit origin.

Shortly after the announcement of Lozoya’s arrest, his lawyer in Mexico said that his client is convinced that the case against him has no foundation.

Javier Coello said later that there is “conclusive” evidence that Lozoya “didn’t manage on his own” the fraudulent activities of which he is accused.

“In the purchase of the plants, I can guarantee that the [former] president Peña [Nieto] was well-informed, he was part of the pact,” he said.

Asserting that “everything” will be revealed in due course, Coello said that he approved of the government’s intention to “clear all this up and combat corruption.”

However, he added that there shouldn’t be “selective justice” – everyone involved in corruption should be held to account.

Reforma reported that former finance and foreign affairs secretary Luis Videgaray and two other former Pemex CEOs, including Lozoya’s successor José Antonio González Anaya, could also be implicated in the corruption of which the ex-official is accused.

Coello said that he would travel to Spain on Thursday and advise him to fight against extradition to Mexico because he’s been made “an icon of corruption here.”

Gertz said that it was unclear how long the process to extradite both Lozoya and the owner and president of the company that sold the Veracruz plant to Pemex – who was arrested in Spain last year – would take.

As things currently stand, Mexico can only apply for Lozoya’s extradition in connection with the case against him for the purchase of the fertilizer plant, he said.

However, the attorney general added that the FGR will seek to broaden the extradition case against him to include other alleged crimes, including the taking of bribes from Odebrecht.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Economista (sp), Milenio (sp)

Following extortion wave, 19 restaurants close in Celaya, Guanajuato

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February 13, 2020